ck and the hubs--16 years ago

16 years ago today i married my best friend. though we'd been living together for more than a year i spent the night at my parent's house the night before, and the hubs stayed at our house w/ his dad. he got stopped at some police road block on the way to the church and was nervously looking for his ID/registration etc. until he explained why he was nervous etc. and the cop let him pass. in packing my stuff the night before i forgot to pack underwear FOR MY WEDDING and the hubs had to drop them off at my parents.

we had a small wedding, one that we paid for ourselves basically. my parents like to rewrite history on this (as well as my college education) by saying they paid for it or helped pay for it, but they didn't. we had the credit card bills to prove it : )

the music we picked to have played at our wedding--bryan adams' everything i do i do for you and chicago's your the inspiration (shut up, we're products of the '80s!)--mysteriously did not work on the sound system the day of the wedding. to this day i'm convinced it really did work but the minister of the baptist church we got married in (we were new to the area and didn't go to church and just picked a church at random) probably thought it was way too secular.

we wrote our own vows, which i sobbed all the way through. on the video i don't even know if you can hear what i was saying. (in case you didn't know, i'm emotional!) soon after the reception we drove to the beach for our honeymoon. i think this is perhaps one of the reasons the beach holds such power over the hubs and i. it was the first time he'd seen the atlantic ocean and the first time we'd ever been to the beach together. we found the german restaurant we still go to to this day. he got his ear pierced that weekend; we danced to eric clapton's wonderful tonight at a restaurant on a pier; we walked on the beach at night. it was awesome.

16 years ago i could not fathom what married life would be like; or, if i did it was certainly an idealistic vision of sunshine and roses and a white picket fence and babies. i didn't really have a clue what marriage was about. i knew i was in love. i knew he was the one. but other than that i wasn't prepared.

i don't know if this is true for all married couples, but for us, those first years were not the time of our life. we fought a lot. we are both hard headed. even though we knew each other, probably better than a lot of people who first get married, being married and living together (even though we'd lived together) was different. we had stresses just like everyone does, though maybe not the exact same. i wanted a baby (badly) and it took five years for that to happen. that caused a lot of stress. we each went through job changes. stress. my family. stress.

but, i can honestly say, i wouldn't change a thing. (the hubs used to say he thought we'd be each other's second marriage)i think our marriage is better now, for the last couple of years, than ever. i don't know if that's because we're older (presumably more mature) or that after awhile you learn what's really important and what to let go. marriage is a lot of work; it's compromise; it's communication--deep, meaningful communication not just how was your day shit. it's about working toward the same goal and enjoying being together even if you don't have a thing to say. we both go through times when we might not like each other (yes, even now) and there are times when we aren't as plugged into each other, but, i can't imagine my life any differently.

and, even though now the kids come first and they absorb most of our time, we are not all about them. i know that when the kids leave the house (sob, sob) we will not be that couple that sits there looking at each other going, hey, who are you? uh, so, how's the weather?